With the accelerating pace of contemporary life and the ongoing shift in aesthetic values, traditional Peking Operafaces multiple challenges in modern communication contexts. These challenges include a high threshold for appreciation, difficulty in un...
With the accelerating pace of contemporary life and the ongoing shift in aesthetic values, traditional Peking Operafaces multiple challenges in modern communication contexts. These challenges include a high threshold for appreciation, difficulty in understanding cultural symbols, and relatively limited modes of dissemination. As a result, its appeal and acceptance—particularly among younger audiences—have continued to decline. Although a wide range of cultural and creative products have incorporated Peking Opera elements, such as packaging design, illustration, digital media, and IP character development, most of these designs remain at the level of symbolic decoration. Systematic investigations into users’ visual acceptance and style preferences are still insufficient. Existing studies are predominantly creator-centered, following a “design first, verify later” approach. This often results in a lack of empirical user feedback and behavioral data, limiting the design outcomes’ ability to address genuine emotional needs and subsequently weakening both cultural communication effectiveness and market conversion. This study focuses on the facial makeup of the four major role typesin Peking Opera—Sheng, Dan, Jing, and Chou—as the core visual elements. It examines how different visual styles perform across various categories of cultural and creative products and further analyzes their influence on users’ narrative immersionduring the viewing experience.
This study adopts a two-stage research design consisting of a pre-survey phaseand a formal experiment. In the pre-survey phase, a questionnaire was used to identify representative subcategories within three types of cultural and creative products—cognitive, emotional, and functional. Based on user feedback and a review of relevant literature, three highly representative product categories were ultimately selected for the formal experiment. For the development of role-based visual stimuli, the study further drew on the four fundamental role types in Peking Opera—Sheng, Dan, Jing, and Chou—and selected the most symbolically representative facial-makeup images from each category. These four role images were then redrawn in three distinct visual styles: prototype-keeping, simplified, and abstract. Each redesigned image was subsequently placed into the application context of the three product types, resulting in a total of 36 sets of experimental stimuli. These stimuli form the complete set of materials used in the formal experimental stage.
In the formal experiment, user testing was conducted using the 36 sets of visual stimuli generated during the pre-survey stage. The participants were ordinary users between the ages of 20 and 60, representing diverse age groups, educational backgrounds, and levels of cultural consumption experience, thereby ensuring the representativeness of the sample. The questionnaire was distributed both online and offline, yielding a total of 224 valid responses. The survey measured four core dimensions—visual preference, narrative understanding, immersion experience, and cultural identity—all assessed using a five-point Likert scale. Data analysis was performed using Jamovi and SPSS. Reliability and validity tests were first conducted to ensure the internal consistency and structural soundness of the measurement scales. Descriptive statistics were then used to examine user response patterns across different conditions. Subsequently, a Two-way ANOVAwas employed to test the main effects and interaction effects of visual style and product type. When significant interaction effects were identified, post hoc multiple-comparison analyses were conducted to determine the specific sources of the differences.
The results indicate that visual style has a significant impact on user experience across all three categories of cultural and creative products. For cognitive products, the prototype-keeping style facilitates users’ understanding of cultural information and yields higher scores in immersion experience. For emotional products, the simplified style is preferred due to its clear emotional cues. For functional products, the abstract style demonstrates better suitability because of its symbolic expression and visual simplicity. In addition, narrative immersion shows a significant positive effect on cultural identity, suggesting that visual style not only shapes users’ emotional engagement but also contributes to the development of cultural attitudes.